Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Tough decisions

You may have noticed that I've been absent from the blog for a few days - it's been a time of tough decisions and it's been exhausting. This thursday we looked at a house with a 7500 square meter garden (1.9 acres) outside Uppsala - and the entire family fell in love. Not only is the garden big, it's beautiful, with a barn suitible for any kind of companies you might wan't to start, a guest cottage good as a home for elderly inlaws or as a writing cottage for a writing mother. The son ran aorund the grounds bubbling with joy, and daddy concluded that not only was there plenty of lawns to run around, but also a small ravine to climb through - when our tiny heir gets a little older.

When feeling like that it's hard to make the decision to not buy the house. It's too far from other things we want in our lives; the right kind of schools, libraries and museums. Yes, you read it right; we are a family who wants at least one library and one museum close by to feel at home - a garden is the cherry on top. Besides, we would be moving so far away from friends that we would loose contact, and when there is a draw between people (ie. friends and family) and material things people is prioritized.

I say it yet again, it was a tough decision. Perhaps it sounds strange, but it was comforting when the broker called and we found out that bidding had already reached a level 250.000 SEK (~$30.400) above the prize we had set as our top bid (btw this was almost half a million kronas /$60.000 above the starting bid). I hope the house is bought by someone who will care for it as good as the previous owners - it's rare to see something that has been loved to that extent.

Another tough decision I had to make was regarding the future of Indoor Gardener. It's been dreary to blog for some time now, and I've toyed with the idea of shutting down completely. I don't want to; I'm almost at the conclusion of my experiment - I'm starting to get gardening into my bones and know what plants to chose if I want to harvest the year round. The "only" thing left is to trim routines and habits to actually get it to work. But now when I'm working I'm short of time, so short that I need to cut back on blogging to get time for the indoor gardens. After all, an Indoor Gardener blog without indoor vegetables would be rather stupid.

So I've decided to cut back on updates but keep on blogging. For the time being Indoor Gardener will be updated on Tuesdays, perhaps with one bonus post or another when I decide a plant needs to be photographed :)

The time I'll gained by these meassurements will be spent on different things - as to the indoor gardening I'll fight critters and diseases. I'm very tired of seeing a beatiful plant rise from the seed, only to stoop back again a few days covered with a variety of spots. This means war. In addition I have a couple of large projects boiling that needs a lot of basic preparations; I need to teach myself how to use an asortment of softwares and do thorough research in several areas. The advantage of taking this time ("time", I hope will be about a year) is that when I return to full speed I'll be able to send Indoor Gardener through several channels to cyber space.

Thus, Indoor Gardener will be in an controlled blog fade, but it's a fade that leads to something good.

5 comments:

Kenneth Moore said...

I am almost jealous/happy/saddened by your almost-purchase of such land! I live in an apartment that is, I think, 34 square meters--only a few of which contain my ever-expanding garden.

Think of what you could do with 7500 square meters! I... I can't imagine. I can't at all. It's too big.

I am sorry to hear about the planned down-shifting--but I will still be following you every Tuesday!

All the best, my compatriate!

Anonymous said...

So, I really did promise myself to Comment more :) I know what it's like to receive a comment to your blog - I've had one or two on mine over at http://lolagirl10.wordpress.com and I can't expect any if I don't myself comment on other's :)

Regarding your indoor gardening, I don't think you should shut down the blog completely instead change it into a more generic blog about general stuff ;) including indoor gardening!

I don't know if you get many hits, but to narrow a blog to one subject I don't think is the best way to attract new readers!

Regards from Twitter:

Lisa107b :)

Rosengeranium said...

Kenneth: I couldn't either untill I saw the place. I spent some happy moments placing imaginary raised beds on the best spots and planning meadows to cut down on lawn mowing.

Thanks for following. The great thing about downshifting is that it gives me time to follow you and others more regularly - I've missed that.

Lolagirl10: Hallo Lisa 107b! Great to have you here! This used to be the narrow sideblog to a more general blog I kept at a christian site. As fate has it the christian blog faded and this lived, and it would feel strange to change it now. Of course, in the big english speaking sphere there are quite a few interesting in inovative gardening, even if their percentage of the whole is low.

Comments are what makes blogging fun - so I'm bookmarking yours to pay a visit every now and then - I'll sign with a link to my writing blog
Rosengeranium's Weekly Work
(Yeah, I suck at doing generic - I know ;) )

Green Merge said...

Hey, just found your blog, quite glad it will be only Tuesdays as I wouldn't have time to follow it every day. Am a happy new balcony/kitchen window gardener with not-so-green fingers, so will be looking out for tips and inspiration here. So far mostly herbs, some chilli plants and currently trying to get some peppers which I've grown from seed, we'll see if that works... Will have a look at some of your older posts now!

Rosengeranium said...

Sounds like a good startup! Wellcome to the blog and good luck!